The invention relates to an arcade amusement device and more particularly to a pneumatic gun game.
In the sale and manufacture of arcade amusement devices there are two primary considerations which must be taken into account. The first consideration is how attractive the game is to the player and the second consideration is how attractive the game is, from an operational point of view, to an arcade owner. In the latter category fall such questions as the relative amount of maintenance required to run the game and the amount of revenue which is likely to be generated by the game.
While target shooting games have long been in existence, it has been found that a game in which a tangible object is launched by the player has more appeal than electronic target shooting type games. Target shooting games involving the actual firing of a live round in a gun, however, have many drawbacks such as noise and operator safety. One attempt to overcome this problem has been a pneumatic gun which launches tennis balls at stationary or moving targets. This gun is known under the trademark of BAZOOKA and is manufactured by Jo Paul Industries, Lake Oswego, Oregon.
In the BAZOOKA gun, tennis balls are gathered up by the arcade operator and loaded into a metal rack which is then positioned on top of the gun. The rack is tilted at such an angle that the balls roll toward one end of the rack. The player, by sliding back a bolt, allows one ball at a time to fall into a breach within the gun. In this way, the gun is loaded in a single shot fashion by the player. The player fires the gun by pulling a trigger or pushing a button. The fired tennis ball travels in almost a straight projectory to strike an upright target. The balls are returned to the player area by means of a trough running along a side wall. The balls accumulate in a holding pen which services all of the guns for that arcade device. The operator must gather up the balls, one rack at a time, and supply each gun with a filled rack of balls.
The BAZOOKA gun has many drawbacks from the operator and player point of view. The sound made by the gun is so deafening that sound-proofing for the operator is required. The manual loading of the gun requires that the player reaim the gun each time he wishes to fire the gun. This introduces an element of skill into the gun which allows the arcade operator to award prizes to the players who achieve a certain skill in hitting the targets. Without this element of skill, the arcade operator could not award prizes without violating the various state gambling laws. Unfortunately, the requirement that the player manually load the gun by moving the bolt detracts from the appeal of the gun, making it seem rather old-fashioned. The guns are mounted in a gimbal arrangement which allows no recoil of the gun upon firing. This also reduces the realism of the gun for the player. Because each gun fires at a different rate, it is not possible to have completely fair competitive shooting between several guns and players.
All in all, the BAZOOKA type gun suffers from the disadvantages that it is unrealistic to the players, produces a deafening sound, and requires a considerable amount of labor in reloading the guns and showing the players how to operate the guns.